Josh Kopelman

Managing Director of First Round Capital.

espite being coastally challenged (currently living in Philadelphia), Josh has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since its commercialization. In 1992, while he was a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Josh co-founded Infonautics Corporation – an Internet information company. In 1996, Infonautics went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

We announced the Dorm Room Fund here in
Philadelphia. We received interest from over 700 students to serve on the
investment committee. We selected 11 students. And they have
already begun to make investments at a rapid pace! So far they’ve
committed over $150K for investment into 8 companies founded by Philadelphia-area
students. We’re so happy with the traction that we’re seeing
here in Philadelphia, that we’re even expanding the Dorm Room Fund to other
cities.

We’ve hired over a dozen interns from Penn and Drexel, including
six Portfolio Consultants – who have completed over 30 consulting engagements
for our portfolio in the last month!

And in the last six months we’ve been thrilled to see other investors step up to support Philadelphia
entrepreneurs. Goldman Sachs committed $10 million in
loans to Philadelphia startups. Blackstone (in partnership with Temple University, Philadelphia University, and the
University City Science Center) announced a $3M LaunchPad program to
provide mentorship and venture consultation to entrepreneurs, Drexel University
unveiled plans for a new fund --
Drexel Ventures -- which will provide seed funding for technology
startups. The University of Pennsylvania Healthcare System, Blue Cross
and DreamIt Ventures teamed up to launch DreamIt
Health – an accelerator that provides investment, mentoring, and
customer-access to healthcare entrepreneurs. And we’ve been approached by
several suburban venture firms who are contemplating moving to the city!

Finally, today we are excited to announce that First Round
Capital has been selected by the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) to manage the Startup PHL Seed
Fund, a new fund announced by Mayor Michael Nutter to increase the availability of investment
capital for Philadelphia-based startups. This fund will be a
co-investment fund – where the PIDC has allocated $3 million to be
invested alongside $3 million from First Round Capital in qualified, Philadelphia-based
startups. We’re hoping that this fund will result in more companies
starting – and staying – in Philadelphia.

It’s been a busy six
months – and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next six!

First
Round Capital is an entirely new kind of venture firm built from the ground up
to help the world's best entrepreneurs build better companies. One of our
key tools to deliver on this promise is crafting incredible in person
experiences for the entrepreneurs we work with – it's something we now do over
50 times per year. We're creating a new role at First Round, a
Platform Experience and Operations Manager, to help us take these events to the
next level, continue to innovate and create experiences we haven't even
thought of yet – and build systems and process to allow our entire
Platform team to scale.

As
a Platform Experience and Operations Manager you will be responsible
for running and innovating on all aspects of our in person experiences that
range from intimate dinners with the most influential names in
technology through CEO and CTO Summit, our internal conferences that bring
together the leadership teams from our 170+ companies. You will have the
opportunity to work with the entire First Round team as well as directly with
the founders and companies in our portfolio. In addition, you'll help our
7 person Platform
team scale through innovative systems and processes. This
team includes business development, recruiting, learning and research.

The
qualities we care most about:

Relentlessly
resourceful – you need to be able to
see a project from idea stage through successful completion – and whatever
it takes to make it a success. You're looking for an opportunity to take
on huge responsibility and grow in a high velocity work environment.

Get
things done – this role will require
you to get an incredible amount of work done in very short time periods.
We bias towards action.

Curious –
you're interested in learning new things and can learn very quickly.

Pixel
perfect – in everything we do, we try
to bring care and thoughtfulness to our work. So while the big ideas
matter – we care deeply about the details.

No
ego – you're willing to do anything and the phrase
"that's not my job" is not something you'd ever say. Ever.

Passion
for technology – everyone on our team is
passionate about technology, startups and company construction – and you
need to be too.

We're
looking for someone with anywhere from 0-3 years of professional experience. The position is based out of our San Francisco office.

If
you're interested in joining First Round and helping us turn venture capital
upside down – email resourceful@firstround.com with 3 specific
examples of when you were relentlessly resourceful and your résumé.